Sunday, August 02, 2009

Harder than it looks

Did you ever think about all the little words that you utter and read every day? We talk about a college graduate knowing about 20,000 words, and the average person using perhaps 4-5,000 during the course of normal interaction. College professors and avid readers and writers use perhaps 30,000. Shakespeare used 60,000. But, he was a huge show off.

But what are the top 100? This quiz was surprisingly hard. List the top 100 English words (picked by their frequency of use) in five minutes.

I got 47 the first time around, although I'm sure it ignored some of my entries!

1 comment:

laurafingerson said...

Hm, I got 41. A burst of "oh that's right, the question words!" saved me in those last 5 seconds. I am surprised I didn't know more of them, now that I see the list. Cool!! (I was also listening to the prattle of my girls at the time and apparently, they use different words than the top adult 100!)